Electronic office tools are ubiquitous in today's business environments. These electronic office tools include, for example, calendars, appointment books, address books and contact lists, to name a few. In fact, these tools are typically an extension of features provided by time management software such as desk accessory packages and mainframe office automation systems. These tools are often packaged by original equipment manufacturers. For example, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) packages many of these features in Lotus Notes®. (IBM and Lotus Notes are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both).
Calendaring and other time management systems are very powerful tools. For example, these tools allow a user to schedule appointments such as team meetings or other appointments and notify and/or remind participants by email of such appointments. Calendar features also include automatic event reminders, including mobile phone notifications, which instantly bring up calendar events with built-in search tools.
By way of a more specific example, electronic calendars have special functionality which allows users to track scheduled events, add events to a calendar, and notify/invite other individuals of the scheduled events. In addition, many electronic calendars permit the user to denote blocks of time for scheduled vacation, either as half day vacations or full day vacations, site holidays and other customized out of the office events. In fact, some calendars permit a sharing feature to allow other users to see upcoming events on another user's calendar.
These functions are all very useful when organizing and scheduling events and, in particular managing time. However, it is not uncommon for scheduled events to conflict with one another, unbeknownst to the user. For example, a user may have scheduled a block of time for an out of office event such as a vacation, but also accepted an appointment for a business meeting during this same time. This would typically occur, as one example, by a colleague sending a recipient an email invitation requesting a meeting at a certain time and date. The recipient would accept the invitation by “hitting” the “accept” button, which, in turn, would automatically notify the sender of such acceptance. By doing so, the business meeting would automatically be placed into the recipient's calendar at the accepted time and date. However, unwittingly, the accepted invitation may conflict with a scheduled vacation. This may not be realized, at all, or may be realized only after the recipient was looking through his/her calendar for other scheduled events.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.